By Duncan Mackay
November 2 – UEFA has drawn up detailed proposals for Michel Platini’s radical idea to spread the 2020 European Championship finals across Europe – and will present the unprecedented blueprint to its top brass next month, insideworldfootball understands.
The UEFA President revealed during the summer that with so few individual nations able to stage an expanded tournament because of both its size and the financial demands, multiple venues could be used for the first time, with fans criss-crossing borders to support their teams.
The framework for a pan-European 2020 tournament, drawn up by operations director Martin Kallen, is understood to be at an advanced stage and will be put to UEFA’s Executive Committee for the first time on December 6.
Under the one-off plan, in the group phase 12 venues will host six groups of four teams, each group assigned two cities fairly close to one another to assist both teams and supporters.
In subsequent rounds there will be eight matches in eight cities – comprising the top two from each group plus the third-placed teams – then four matches in the other four cities so that all 12 have been used effectively.
The semi-finals and final will take place in one country, although not necessarily one city.
The English Football Association (FA) has already confirmed it would be interested in hosting the semi-finals onwards, a point made to Platini (pictured above, left) by FA chairman David Bernstein (pictured above, right) when the pair met in London last month.
That would probably see Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium and Old Trafford used for the semi-finals, with Wembley Stadium set for the final.
France stages the first expanded 24-team finals in 2016 and Platini’s ambitious idea for 2020, apparently given the codename “12+ 1” by Kallen, will be discussed in detail by the UEFA Executive Committee in Lausanne on December 6 ahead of a final decision on the concept, possibly in January.
Crucially, it is understood that countries and cities will not be selected until 2015 to give interested national federations time to stake their claim to stage part of the tournament.
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